Rob Savage’s Horror Adaptation ‘Other Mommy’ Delivers a Misfiring, Ineffectual Screen Thrill

If you spent your summer enduring the relentless, frenetic trailer for “Other Mommy” ahead of every major multiplex release, prepare yourself for an extended dose of that exact same energy within the feature film itself. From the very opening moments, the production establishes its frantic pacing with a title card that crawls onto the screen letter-by-letter, heavily intercut with jarring, choppy bursts of action. Directed by Rob Savage and adapted from the chilling horror novel “Incidents Around the House,” the finished cinematic product unfortunately emerges as one of the most limp and ineffectual works to grace the silver screen this year. It misfires in nearly every conceivable direction, with its tone suffering the most glaring and consistent collapse.

At various points throughout its tight 94-minute runtime, the movie plays as though it were originally conceived as a horror-comedy in the distinct, chaotic vein of Sam Raimi, only to be frantically recut at the eleventh hour to resemble a straightforward, traditional scarefest. The result feels heavily compromised, complete with missing narrative chunks that an audience might easily imagine had been violently ripped out by hand. The overarching saga begins abruptly, feeling very much like a narrative second act rather than an introduction, and it subsequently locks itself into a relentless, exhausting state of continuous climax.

This perpetual escalation relies on an endless litany of numbing jump scares that grow remarkably stale within the first act alone, primarily because they almost always unfold in the exact same manner. More often than not, the camera mechanically tracks in a circle around an unsuspecting character, revealing from directly behind them the film’s eponymous antagonist: the Other Mommy, portrayed by Jessica Chastain. Unfortunately, Chastain’s physical realization of the demon involves a wide grin that reads far more goofy than genuinely unsettling, framing the entity as a supernatural being that poses very little actual threat to the household. The sheer effort expended by the filmmakers in attempting to make this single formula work a hundred different ways might border on the endearing if the final product were not so gratingly monotonous.

When the story officially gets underway, young adolescent protagonist Bela, played by Arabella Olivia Clark, is already intimately familiar with the shadowy creature lurking in her bedroom. The entity frequently takes the recognizable form of her mother, Ursula, also brought to life by Chastain. It is not long before Bela’s father, Russell, played by Jay Duplass, catches his own chilling glimpse of the monster. The supernatural intruder openly taunts the family in the kitchen one morning, precipitating a strikingly straight-faced narrative premise where every family member immediately and readily accepts that there is an exact, sinister copy of Ursula hiding somewhere inside their domestic sanctuary. In a bizarre stylistic choice, this duplicate occasionally contorts her body into the shape of a swastika for reasons that remain entirely unexplained and narratively unmotivated.

In the typical landscape of the horror genre, when characters are confronted with bizarre anomalies, screenplays usually introduce skeptical naysayers specifically for the purpose of building foundational tension, skepticism, and gradual intrigue. “Other Mommy,” however, displays a curious disinterest in these traditional structural pillars, rushing past hesitation in favor of immediate, unquestioning acceptance.

Despite gazing directly at the ghostly presence in full view, Bela’s parents never seem particularly spooked or overwhelmed by the danger, even when their young daughter is physically tossed around like a helpless rag doll during a celebratory family anniversary gathering at their home. None of the human characters ultimately behave like real, grounded people reacting to genuine trauma. Instead, the Other Mommy functions merely as an impish rogue, acting very much along the lines of Stephen King’s Pennywise the Clown, albeit entirely devoid of the child-eating stakes or visceral menace.

The movie largely unfolds as a sequence of surreal psychological pranks involving domestic ball pits, wonky gravity shifts, and a heavily rendered computer-generated version of Chastain that alternately melts like the classic Batman villain Clayface and flails wildly about like an inflatable tube man stationed outside a secondhand automobile dealership. Throughout these increasingly bizarre set pieces, the film rarely establishes a coherent sense of scale, spatial awareness, or physical proximity, making it extraordinarily difficult for the audience to put any of the chaotic action into a meaningful physical perspective.

If one squints hard enough through the cinematic turbulence, the bare bones of a genuinely compelling story and thematic exploration can be detected. Specifically, young Bela harbors a lingering suspicion that her mother might be engaged in an extramarital affair. Consequently, the core thematic notion that Ursula is not truly who she appears to be establishes a worthwhile entry point into a classic literary tale centered around an eerie, dead-eyed copy—at least in theoretical terms.

In practical execution, however, this mischievous presence ping-pongs wildly between routine maternal deception and the wholesale, supernatural impersonation of entirely different people. While this episodic erraticism may bear some resemblance to the source material, very little of the movie’s condensed 94-minute runtime feels genuinely guided by a coherent visual or emotional idea. In fact, the production all but abandons the “Mommy” half of its central psychological premise long before the credits are permitted to roll.

Adding to the overarching narrative friction, each of the three primary cast members appears to be acting in a markedly different movie entirely. Chastain goes completely for broke with soaring, high-octane melodrama as both the real and fake iterations of the maternal figure. Young Clark, meanwhile, manages a captivating and naturalistic presence despite being asked to play significantly younger and more naive than her actual age, at least until she visibly appears to grow exhausted by the absurdity of the premise—a sentiment the audience can easily share. Duplass, adopting an exaggerated “aw, shucks” demeanor, reads less like a grounded suburban father and more like a broad, punchline-driven caricature pulled straight from a quick-hit comedy sketch.

The production is remarkably all over the map stylistically, a fractured state that is hardly improved by the erratic editing choices. Individual scenes frequently appear to begin and end at completely random intervals without establishing a natural flow, rhythm, or momentum. This disjointed pacing is the clear and undeniable result of a feature that has been cut down within an inch of its life in the editing suite.

In the most basic sense of cinematic grammar, any horror film that attempts to generate supernatural scares courtesy of negative space and atmospheric dread ought to at least feature thoughtful, deliberate framing. Instead, “Other Mommy” deploys an endless series of manufactured startles that all arrive with the exact same weight, volume, and emotional energy as the routine fake-out moments. True cinematic tension instantly dissipates, regardless of who or what suddenly leaps out from darkened domestic corners, as the narrative constantly veers unsteadily between physical dangers and pure imaginary sequences.

Throughout these sequences, Chastain’s spiritual entity occupies young Bela’s attention much like an annoying, persistent daydream that refuses to fade. Ultimately, that summation describes the exact experience “Other Mommy” offers to its viewers as well: an persistent annoyance to be quietly handwaved, rather than a genuine source of cinematic tension, atmosphere, or thematic meaning to be confronted at any stage of the journey. Feel free to keep your arms and legs firmly outside the safety of this cinematic ride; it quickly becomes clear that the production is not going anywhere meaningful anytime soon.